


Basking in the Aftermath

by Kathar



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Spoilers, Recovery, actual Tahiti content, friends-with-benefits to lovers, medical innacuracies (or maybe its SHIELD's fault), pre-pilot backstory, putting the team together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:53:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil and Clint had a deal: alien gods and near death experiences mean room-destroying "we're still alive" sex.</p><p>Except that in the aftermath of the Battle of New York, Phil was declared dead and sent to recover in Tahiti, where he's bored, lonely, and directionless.</p><p>Until Clint shows up to remind him of his promise, anyway.</p><p>(or: How Coulson Got His Groove Back and Put Together A New Band)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Basking in the Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler tag for (apparent) backstory of Coulson’s time between Avengers and AoS.
> 
> The title came first, and I kind of wrote a story around it. Working Tahiti Theory (one of several): SHIELD is hiding whatever they did to Coulson (that he can never know) by putting him in extreme isolation to recover. Coulson has things about Tahiti to hide, himself. 
> 
> Midway through writing this story, my brain revolted and demanded I write the story that became [It Gets Old Fast](http://archiveofourown.org/works/947472), which is the same set of themes (Level 7C, WSC machinations, Fury's secrecy, Tahiti) with the starting point of an established relationship. It Gets Old Fast is by far the lighter fic. The two stories are in no way a series, but if you have read that one you will recognize similarities.
> 
> Thanks are due to my wonderful beta, for taking the time to review this in the midst of capstone hell.

**1-- After the Mission in Puente Antiguo**

The lampshade had come off and rolled underneath the table in the corner, but the lamp itself was still bravely glowing, puddling light on the dingy carpet.

A white shirt had landed on top of the bulb a while back. The discolored spot on it had been growing slowly, and was now starting to smoke. 

For a little while, the creaking of the bedsprings and the litany of groans and curses up above continued unabated. And then:

"Waitwaitwait... fuck. You smell that?"

"Damnit, don't _stop_ \-- smell what?"

"Fire. Something's burning. Fuck."

"Don't move!"

" _Phil._ Not... what you were just shouting."

"That was in, not out-- wait. There it is. See: lamp."

"Lamp?"

"Lamp. Shirt. Smoking."

"See it. Water. Need-- right." A hand stretched down and flung the shirt onto the floor. A moment later, the contents of a plastic water bottle landed on top of the shirt, drenching it and sending up curls of acrid steam. 

"There. Done. Okay?"

"Get the fuck back in me, Clint."

"Sir, yes _sir_ ," Clint said, and drove himself back into Phil with such enthusiasm that he nearly plastered both of them to the headboard. Phil's arms buckled where he'd been bracing them, and his head dropped as he groaned in relief.

They were soon back to their boxspring destroying pace, both of them shaking with the effort of holding themselves upright, Phil against the headboard and Clint against Phil's hips. Even with the momentary distraction they were nearing the end. Clint's rhythm began to stutter as his control failed.

"Soon-- " he gasped. "Do you want-- are you close?"

"Yes, fuck, do it," Phil ground out, and Clint shifted forward, draping himself against Phil's back and grabbing his cock in a sweaty hand.

His strokes matched his thrusts, and Phil's legs began to tremble in earnest, his arms to shake. Behind him, Clint went rigid, crying, and his hand spasmed. He thrust frantically, stilled, thrust again with helpless little mews, his head buried in Phil's shoulder, then drew back and slammed in one final time, still trembling fitfully. Phil wrapped his hand around Clint's, pulled twice, and was gone himself, falling into the headboard and smacking his chin even as his cock pulsed in release.

They collapsed back into the bed, a heap of limbs, and after a while drew off their condoms. Clint collected both and tossed them into the garbage can, which was listing against an overturned chair across the room.

The chair had once been next to the desk, but had ended up several feet away. The corded telephone, desk lamp, cheap scratch pad with the motel logo, and random hospitality-related fliers trailed along the floor to one side. The desk itself had collected several watery hand and ass prints, currently seeping under the cheap cracked varnish. The component garments of a two-piece business suit and a tactical outfit, both black, were strewn about all available surfaces.

The wall mirror was smeared all the way up to about head-height. It was still doing better than the framed print of a cattle drive, which had fallen behind the headboard.  
One free-standing lamp had been left upright, a tie dangling off it. The half-windsor was still knotted.

The state of the bathroom didn't even bear thinking about.

" _Well_ , then." Phil breathed after a while, and Clint laughed beside him, a tiny helpless sound.

"Oh fuck, we do that well," he said. 

"Mm-hm," was all of Phil's response, but it was a very, very smug little hum. 

"Another cataclysmic event, another destroyed motel room," Clint drawled. "Why is it we only do this when one of us has nearly died or the world has almost ended?"

"Be fair; this time it was just an alien god sending down a robot, with associated destruction of a small municipality."

"Right, destruction of a small municipality by a large alien robot-thing that _you attempted to reason with._ Okay, so we're adding literal acts of God to the pre-fuck checklist?"

"It would seem so." There was silence in the room for a minute, except for the distant patter of water in the shower.

"We could always try doing this sometime when we haven't just nearly died, right?"

"Given the trail of destruction we usually leave, I don't think we could afford it on a SHIELD salary. Do you, Barton?" 

"... No. Maybe not. But we're totally on for the next alien god invasion, yeah?"

"For certain." 

"I'll hold you to that, Coulson. Shall we go see what the kids have done with our gift?"

"If they've managed to break it already, they're not getting a replacement. Two-story tall alien war bots are hard to come by."

Specialist Clint Barton slipped out of bed and wandered off to the likely frigid shower, while Phil Coulson retrieved his waterlogged and burnt button-down from the floor and looked it over carefully. He was going to have to get their go-bags from the trunk of the car. Keeping extra clothes in a remote location was a precaution they'd learned through experience it was wise to take.

Barton was singing in the shower. Coulson stood for a moment listening before he pulled on his boxers and trousers. He needed to pull himself back into order as a Senior Agent of SHIELD, and Senior Agents of SHIELD did not waddle, no matter what the provocation.

 

**2-- Watching _the Prisoner_ in Paradise**

Tahiti is a magical place to be, when no one knows you're alive.

Scratch that. Tahiti is a _frustrating_ place to be, when _nearly_ no one knows you're alive _and_ you're still weak as a six-day old pup.

That was Phil Coulson's opinion, and it wasn't getting much better with time and recovery.

True, the sterile, bone-dry hospital room was now a distant and extremely vague memory, and he’d spent a remarkably short time in it, or so he'd been told. He'd been so drugged (or comatose) for most of it that he might as well have been on Mars. 

True, he was down from round-the-clock nursing to a personal care assistant and a physical therapist who came every day and a caretaker who lived in the outbuilding. 

True, there was a very large difference between lying in bed hallucinating, and doing laps in the little pool in the courtyard of the old ranch that Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, had apparently decided was an appropriate place for his senior agent to recuperate in Fury-imposed obscurity. (Given the choice, Phil would have preferred one of those little grass huts down by the ocean, but you couldn’t exactly fit caretakers and PTs and sophisticated electronic security in little grass huts.)

Phil was no dummy. This-- the mist on the mountain slope in the morning, the constant access to a fresh pot of local coffee, the distant view of the ocean by sunrise, the evening breeze across the veranda-- was not a reward for nearly taking out an alien god and being the catalyst that brought the Avengers together to save the world.

It was the punishment for going up against an alien god alone and nearly losing his life (for only a _very few_ moments, he had to say in his own defense).

He knew it was a punishment because Nick had only laughed at him when he'd grumpily requested a full set of _the Prisoner_ (the McGoohan version, thank you) to take into his exile with him. _And then the rat bastard had provided it._

Stupidest thing was, Nick didn't even think Phil had made the wrong call, he was just pissed off. All right, pissed off and also apparently trying to get all his most valued playing pieces tucked away in the aftermath of the Battle of New York. For some reason, the World Security Council was mad at Fury. Less for questioning their decision than for being _right_ \-- there was a lot of that kind of ironic punishment going around. 

He'd scattered the Avengers to the four winds and he'd hidden Phil in the middle of French Polynesia, desperate to reduce the number of people who could be used against him. In Phil’s case, the security in those early days was weirdly impersonal and extremely thorough. It suggested hidden motives for the particular care with which Fury’d isolated his One Good Eye, but Phil was too weak, too full of ennui, still to do much more than speculate in an increasingly claustrophobic vacuum of information. 

The rigidly enforced isolation in which Phil had been kept had lifted a little about a month ago, when Fury had come up the road, still in all his black and his leather, making no concessions to the noonday sun, sat himself on Phil's veranda with a hibiscus tea in hand, and leaned back.

"So, Number Six," he'd rumbled out. "It's time we talked about your future with SHIELD."

"If you think I'm going to be your little black-ops boy, so off-books I don't have an identity of my own anymore, doing all your dirty work in foreign places, never coming in from the cold, you've got another think coming. 'I am not a number, I am a human being,' as the man says."

"Don't be a bigger asshole than you have to be, Phil. That'd be wasting your talents. I didn't hire you to play spy versus spy-- we have specialists for that. I hired you because you're a fucking strategic genius. We both know if you really thought I was going to disappear you forever, I wouldn't have _found_ you here. You'd have been halfway to Indonesia as soon as you could stand."

"The food was too good. I didn't want to leave it behind before I was sure."

"I appreciate that. I also appreciate that no-one's showed up here to say hello."

"For fuck's sake, Nick, how badly would I have had to be oxygen-deprived to have done that, no matter how much I wanted to? Who was I going to contact? Sitwell or Hill or Woo, all of whom you needed for rebuilding, and who probably had WSC tails that would have come down with them? Barton and Romanov, which would have brought the WSC down on _all_ of us? _Stark_ , for God's sake? Don't make a virtue out of common sense. What do you have in mind for me?" Nick set down the tea and leaned forward.

"What do _you_ have in mind, Phil?"

"What?" Phil said, and it seemed like a brilliant rejoinder at the time.

"You've been as close as I have to what's been happening these past few years. Since Stark probably, since Puente Antiguo definitely. You probably even caught this new bullshit about the Mandarin on the news. You know very nearly everything I know, and you know how fucking unprepared we were for Loki and the Chitauri. I am asking my friend, my good eye, to tell me how he sees himself playing a part in all this."

Of the very many ways in which Nick Fury was an absolute bastard and a rotten friend, open-ended questions like that ranked pretty high on the list. Phil turned it over, letting one hand rest gently on the head of his cane, his thumb worrying at the smooth sides.

"Reinstate me. Keep me under wraps while I'm recovering; no access below Level 7 yet. Let's not show our hand before we know what it is. But reinstate me. You wouldn't be here if you didn't think you had the WSC on a leash, so you can't use that excuse."

"I have; Barton and Romanov have both been helping that project-- in their own ways." Phil smiled fondly. 

"They're doing okay then?" He knew better than to ask how they'd been keeping Fury informed if they'd been off-grid; he knew them of old. 

"Romanov is... Romanov. I still can't read her worth a damn when she doesn't want me to. Barton did what I asked, then went truly off-grid a few days back. Romanov knows where he is but won't tell-- I'm taking her word that he's still alive. She says it's best to just let him come in when he's ready, and truth to tell? I don't know what I'd do with him right now, so I'm not pushing."

"Hm," Phil hummed in acknowledgement. "And Sitwell's a Level 7 now too?"

"He's had to be, he's been doing a lot of your work. You just want your friends to come in for a chat."

"Yes. That's exactly what I want. I also want to talk to my _colleagues_. I want to hear everything you've been keeping from me for my own good, and then I'll let you know what I think." His fingers templed of their own volition, and his eyes grew distant. Nick laughed.

"You old spider, you, already at work. Fine. Level 7 access, and I'll send Sitwell out with a secure laptop, alias, and connections. I'm also sending out one of our own doctors regularly, to assess your progress. You're still on leave right now, do you hear me? And no taking on alien gods on your own while you're on leave."

"No," Phil said, contemplative, "I'm still owed from the last one, anyway."

That was a month ago. Agent Jasper Sitwell had shown up, several exhilarating black cases in hand and a suspicious glisten in his eye, three days later. He'd brought tidings from SHIELD, all the electronic goodies a convalescing intelligence agent could want, and no Barton.

Deputy Director Hill had called a week later, to debrief him in greater detail about the current repair and recruitment efforts, taunt him with photos of bagels and lox from their favorite Manhattan deli, and take a wholly unexpected break from the video conference so sniffle offscreen. That week did not bring Barton, either. 

Barton did not come the week after, though Sitwell's emails had made it clear the entire top level was ablaze with speculation about Phil, about his next project, about when he was coming home so they could have a huge, drunken, top-secret bash in his honor. Phil nearly went off-grid himself at the thought of it.

Barton did not come the week after _that_ , and Fury sent word that Natasha was out and active on operations once again, but had made sure that Barton was safe before she left. He knew; he had to know. He just-- for whatever reason and likely it was even a good one and God knew he didn't owe Phil anything but _still_ \-- didn't want to come.

Eventually Phil stopped expecting it.

Which, of course, was when Barton finally did show up.

 

**3-- An Archer Arrives in Odd Attire**

"You broke your promise," Clint-- Barton-- said, leaning against the breadfruit tree with his impossible arms crossed. Phil absolutely did not stop short on the steps to stare at him.

"What is that ridiculous thing on your head?" he asked. Barton raised one hand, one long-fingered, multi-ringed hand, to it.

"A hat?" A suave little straw fedora, in fact, with a berry-striped band, and Phil blinked several times.

"Are you undercover as a vacationing hipster?" he snapped, still frozen in place with one hand on the stairs, taking in Barton's wrinkled linen trousers, his guayabera shirt, the leather cuffs on his wrists in place of his arm guards, and his general air of seedy aloofness. "Or have you finally gone mad and let Tony Stark outfit you?"

"Well hello to you, too, Coulson. Glad to know you're pleased to see me. Get killed and disappear like that and you make a guy wonder." The tone was light enough, but airless and dry, as if it was going to crumble into dust with a touch.

"I didn't get much choice in the disappearance and I'm always pleased to see you," Phil said, and if his own tone was a little damp with relief, it could be excused. Barton clearly needed to hear it that way. "How's Natasha?"

"Last I heard, she was fine. Stop changing the subject; you broke your promise." His voice was better, but sandpaper-rough, and Phil took a firm grip on his cane and started down the steps. 

"My promise?" he asked, stumping across the uneven path towards his own front gate and the archer who waited for him in the shade.

"You know the one-- alien god shows up, we save the world, mind-blowing sex afterwards."

"I... didn't think we were still doing that?" Phil tried to keep his own voice light, squinting with the effort of searching for Barton's expression under the shadows. "I didn't hear anything from you, eventually I assumed you had better things to do." He wondered if that came out half as brittle as Barton's had.

Barton shifted, and even with the brim of that absurd hat pulled over his eyes it was clear he was scowling. 

"I'm not bitter," Phil hastened to qualify. "Look, I'm just glad you made it here at all. I'm just glad you're _you_ at all. I can't imagine what happened to you, I know your first priority had to be your own mental health. And Fury's work with the WSC. And Tahiti's not exactly on the way to anywhere. So I just... I figured that was the end of it." He'd come so close now that the large-lobed leaves of the breadfruit brushed his forehead as he stepped under it, to where he could meet Barton eye to eye, hat withstanding.

Phil pulled the hat off.

Barton's eyes were greenish blue, the circles under them were petal purple. He looked like he hadn't slept well... in months, really. It was such a relief to see _him_ peering out of them that Phil nearly sighed. 

"You thought I knew," Barton said, his voice flat. 

"Well, yes. Fury reinstated me a month ago, Level 7 access. Before that, I was--"

"But Nat and I are Level 7 _C_ s," Barton cut him off, harsh. "Specialist designation. Remember the paperwork? Not like you to forget a detail like that. Do you know what the difference between being a Level 7 and a Level 7C is, Coulson?" Phil let his face signal his confusion. "The difference, apparently, is that only the first one gets to know that you're alive."

Phil let his face answer that one, too, since his voice couldn't decide between horror, rage, or protest. He wouldn't have been able to speak anyway around the sudden lump in his throat. It must have been a satisfactory answer, because Barton laughed suddenly, or did something that was probably meant to be one but ended up too tattered, and covered his face with his large hands.

"Here I thought maybe you didn't want me to know," he mumbled into them. "I wouldn't have blamed you. It's not like you're my handler now. Considering... considering Loki, if I didn't have to see me, I probably wouldn't want to either." Phil reached out to wrench those big hands away, and at the last minute slapped him with the fedora instead. Barton peeped up around his fingers, inquisitive.

"That's nearly as ridiculous a notion as this damn hat. What the hell have you been doing since New York? Swanning about Portland in a self-abnegating depression?"

"Yeah, basically," Barton admitted, bringing his hands all the way down to reveal a slightly rueful smile. "When I wasn't helping Fury hobble the WSC, that is. It beat hanging around SHIELD watching them repair the Helicarrier I broke and waiting for someone to decide I needed to be in custody after all, or maybe group therapy. How did you know it was Portland?" Phil raised an eyebrow, and the hat. There was something approaching actual humor in Barton's laugh this time, and he shrugged before continuing. "Truth to tell, I've been kind of a basket case. The work's mostly what was keeping me together. When that bit was done, well, I crawled off into a hole for a while. That little safehouse you, Nat and I put together privately just after New Mexico. When I came back out, my first contact was Sitwell. Practically the first fucking thing he asked me was whether I was going to make it to the big party he's been planning for when you go active again. He's thinking of a zombie theme."

"Holy fuck."

"Yeah, well, I warn you now."

"I wasn't talking about the zombies." Barton shot Phil a tiny smile, then began walking toward the house, stopping long enough to wait for Phil to get with the program and come to heel. When he did, Barton turned and looked at the front door.

"If you're talking about me, that does bring me back to where this conversation started," he said. Phil laughed weakly and shook his head, burying it in Barton's hat for a moment. It smelled of hair cream and Clint.

"I hate to disappoint you, Barton, but that's one activity I'm not cleared for. I’m healing fast, but I’m told no strenuous activity for a month or two yet." 

"Ah, well," Barton said, regarding the doorway with a resigned air as he started forward, "I'll just have to stick around until I can collect."

_____

Barton stayed for lunch, which was pretty much just baguettes, ham, fresh cheese and fruit, then disappeared when Phil’s PT came that afternoon, slipping out the back while Phil let her in the front. Phil tried not to watch for him out the window every five minutes, wondering if that was it after all, if Barton had gotten whatever he'd needed and was gone.

He appeared again at what Phil normally dubbed naptime, carting dinner with him. Phil had recently dispensed with the everyday PCA in favor of having an ex-SHIELD niece of the ex-SHIELD caretaker provide dinner (usually from whatever she made for her own household), do light housework, and do the laundry. He probably shouldn’t be handling baths yet himself, but he had a little seat in the shower and made do. It was working out just fi-- it was working out. He was looking and feeling far better than a man who had-- however temporarily-- been dead should look, or so Barton had told him at lunch. 

During lunch, Barton had also caught him up on what he could share (and probably quite a lot of things he oughtn’t have) about his recent counter-intelligence activities against the WSC. He'd talked a little more about his week or so at SHIELD, being debriefed half to death before Fury very strongly suggested that he and Natasha disappear for a while. Phil heard a little about his time in Portland, as well. At least enough to reassure himself that Barton actually _had_ been making something of an effort at recovering. He'd even seen a therapist once or twice. For all the good it had done when he was leaving out, papering over, or making up half the details. 

At dinner, over probably inadvisable amounts of white wine and poisson cru, Phil rambled on about waking up all alone in medical hooked up to too many machines. He described the first lonely institutionalized weeks, the absurd secrecy surrounding the early days in Tahiti, the endless rounds of PTs and exercises and all the myriad thou-shalt-nots that he was definitely ignoring (and the few he wasn’t). Barton still looked a little antsy, so he related his entire conversation with Fury, tried as hard as he could to convey just how lonely he'd been (still was) without quite saying _I feel like the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore_ or something equally pathetic. 

When his wine glass started to tilt between the loose curve of his fingers, it was abruptly taken from him. Phil caught the flash of rings in the low light, and found himself asking: 

“Do you even use your bow, anymore?” Barton looked down at him, at his own hand, then ducked his head.

“Of course. I just don’t-- I’m just not on missions right now. Don’t need to be geared up to go at a moment’s notice.” He was playing with the rings as he spoke, twisting each one in turn. He’d done that intermittently through lunch and then dinner.

“Bring it with you tomorrow? You can practice while I’m in PT.” Phil said, then caught himself. “That is, if you’re coming.”

“Of course I’m coming,” Barton groused, but he’d dropped his hands in favor of pushing Phil’s chair in for him, as he got up. “Last time I let you out of my sight, you died on me.” He was halfway to the door, opening it to leave, before Phil could get himself and his cane moving properly.

“It was only for about eight seconds!” He called after Barton. 

He caught up to the man as he was about to open the gate, and laid a hand over his to delay him. The rings were cool under his fingers.

“Barton,” he started. Barton looked up and shrugged.

“I’ll bring breakfast,” he said, gently dislodging Phil’s hand, and then he was out the gate and gone. It was only then that Phil wondered why the caretaker’s niece hadn’t provided dinner as usual.

____

Barton did bring breakfast: fruit juices and fresh coconut in its milk, yogurt and soft cheese, fresh fish and croissants. All to supplement, if not replace, Phil’s usual bran cereal. Left to himself, Phil knew from long acquaintance, Barton would have had whatever cold cereal was closest to hand. He found that the change made him smile. 

He also brought his bow, and after lunch (the caretaker’s niece had come back, and he caught Barton winking at her as their paths crossed in the kitchen doorway) and coffee with condensed milk, he removed each of his rings and laid them down deliberately on the credenza. They produced solid metallic snaps as they settled. Barton caught Phil’s eye as he finished, flipped the ridiculous straw hat onto his head with one hand, and then disappeared out the French window.

Phil went off to meet his physical therapist at the front door, and proceeded to be absolutely distracted the entire afternoon.

 

**4-- Of Avengers and Assassins and Level 7(C)**

 

The pattern of days was set for a little while in the old ranch house in the foothills. Barton roamed the grounds and shot at things for much of the day while Phil did his exercises, read _the Empty Copper Sea_ in the shade of the veranda, napped, or poked through the newest dispatches from Sitwell. They strolled around the grounds together before lunch and ate dinner together before Barton disappeared for the night. 

Gradually, the rings began to hit the credenza earlier and earlier in the morning. Barton’s rumpled hipster look gave way to the lightweight version of his more usual uniform of cargo pants and t-shirts. Sometimes the shirts even disappeared altogether, and on those days Phil’s physical therapist would sigh in frustration every ten minutes.  
Nick Fury came once, bringing several burn-after-reading files and a bottle of rum.

“I still haven’t gotten an answer from you, Phil. What do you want to do?” he asked. They were back on the porch, watching the ocean darken on the horizon as the sun set.  
“What if I told you I wanted to go back to the Avengers?” Phil replied, watching the rum slide around in his glass. 

“I’d tell you that’s a waste of your talents, too, Phil. We don’t know when they’ll be called to assemble again, and we don’t need a regular liaison for any of ‘em except Stark. And hardly even that, with Ms. Potts around.”

“Plus you don’t plan on telling them I’m alive.”

“Plus I don’t plan on telling them you’re alive, yes. They’re already pissed off enough at me without having to admit to that little stunt.”

“Worked, though,” Phil mused. “That shocked the hell out of me.” Nick shrugged.

“You still pining over your lost trading cards? Or you want to fanboy all over Rogers some more?”

“Don’t bother trying to manipulate me, Nick, I’m not particularly planning on going rogue on you. I got to meet Captain America in the flesh; I can live without embarrassing myself in front of him again. Stark… Stark has other issues right now, I would guess. I don’t need to add to them by suddenly un-dying on him. Pepper, I regret. The ones I’m _pissed_ about are Hawkeye and Black Widow.” He turned to look Nick full in the eyes-- eye.

“Ah.”

“Level 7C, Director?” Nick had the grace to look somewhat ashamed, there in the twilight.

“I was sending them after the WSC, Phil. I couldn’t risk it.”

“Timing’s wrong, Nick, and you know it. They were done with that assignment before you reinstated me. Neither of them are a security risk.”

“Some people would argue with you about Barton, but no, I agree-- they’re not. I’ve been… _hoping_ to throw one or both of them in with Rogers when he pops up, or find a reason for Barton to visit Stark, something like that. Build those bonds a little bit, remind them they've been a team. Not fair to them to be keeping a secret like this from their teammates. And definitely not good for unit cohesion."

“You can’t have it both ways. Either the Avengers only come when we call and aren't worth my time, _or_ we’re doing team-building exercises. Which is it?”

“ _You_ can’t have Strike Team Delta back, Phil,” Fury told him, leaning forward. “It was a good team, but it was a team for a different world. What Hawkeye and Black Widow need to do now, they can do without you.”

“You have no idea _what_ you want Barton to do,” Phil shot back. Fury grunted.

“I _want_ him to get better so that I can have my assassin back, and Romanov still won’t tell me where he is. I could find him if I had to, but I have better uses for the level of resources that would take. You seen him, Mr. Level 7C?”

“He’s been in contact,” Phil admitted, settling back into his chair in satisfaction. 

“Know where he is now?”

“Nope.” He’d disappeared silently earlier, when Fury had come walking up to the front gate. Inside, his rings still winked on the credenza, in a single line. Nick grunted and sat back himself. 

“What the hell is that thing?” he asked after a silence. Phil looked in the direction he was pointing. Barton’s horrible straw hat sat in state on a lounge chair, looking especially stupid by porchlight.

“It’s a hat. You may have noticed I’m a little bit lacking in both the hair and melanin departments,” Phil drawled. “And you sent me to a tropical island. I don’t see what’s so shocking about it.”

____

Phil slept late the next morning, still floating on rum and secrets. When he came into the kitchen, he saw Barton leaning against a counter, chatting with the caretaker’s niece. Her dark head bent towards his light one, and whatever he was saying was making her giggle. Phil hadn’t thought the ex-field agent, whom he’d heretofore considered to be staid-- serious, even, with her beetle-dark brows always glowering at him-- could laugh. Barton caught his eye as he came in, nodded, and poured him a cup of coffee.

His fingers were graceful, smooth to the touch as he handed it over. No rings at all today.

They took a walk after breakfast, down a path that wandered along the crest of the hill for a while before diving down into thick brush, Phil's cane abandoned with the blessing of his PT. They’d just left the porch when Barton flipped his hat off his head, and set it on Phil’s. Phil glared at him.

“We wouldn’t want you to get sunburnt up top,” he grinned. 

“Ah. I wondered if you were in hearing distance.”

“Maybe a little. Sir? Phil?" He stopped and turned, and the early morning sun made him squint as he looked at Phil. Phil shoved his hands behind his back and waited. “Thank you,” Barton said after a while. Phil shrugged.

“Always,” he said. They walked along in silence for a while, listening to the bird calls, the hum of insects and the rustle of creatures in the brush. Eventually the path dipped down a steep slope, winding its way to a small creek. Barton went first, swinging easily down the switchbacks, then turned back.

Phil picked his way down, looking up every once in awhile to find Barton’s eyes on him, his hands held out just the tiniest bit. He didn’t offer to help, and Phil nodded his gratitude at the bottom. They walked along the creek.

“What did you think about the Avengers initiative, when Fury and I talked about it?” he asked after a while.

“Dunno,” Barton said, reaching up to slap at palm fronds above his head. “Not sure if it has that much to do with me.”

“Oh?” Phil tried to keep his voice casual. “You know you were always meant to be part of the team.”

“Yeah, but… that doesn’t mean I ought to be part of the team now.”

“Why not?” There was silence for a little, as Phil stopped, waiting for an answer. 

Barton had stopped, too, his back tense. When said nothing Phil continued, increasingly intent. 

“What Loki made you do was not your fault. No one sensible thinks it’s your fault, that was all on him. You nearly killed yourself trying to fix that. Fury let me see the reports. Clint--” Phil reached forward to grab his shoulder, make the man turn and look him in the eyes. Barton-- Clint-- did turn, did look him in the eyes, and carefully removed Phil’s hand from his shoulder, caressing the back of it with his thumb before releasing it.

“I know that. Seriously. I do know that, Phil. Natasha got there long before you, anyway. As did Sitwell, and hell, even SHIELD’s psych, before I went AWOL. It’s not that. I just… I don’t know. Things have changed.” He looked away, then. Phil put out a hand and turned his chin back. Clint looked at the ground.

“What would you do? Not go back if you get the call?”

“Nah, I’d go back, but—what if we’re not the best guys for the job?”

“Clint, the whole point is that these are jobs _only_ superheroes can do.”

“Okay, yeah, I get it but—let’s say someone’s set up a moon base, yeah? What’re you gonna do with an archer on a moon base? Don't get me wrong, I would sign up so fast your head would spin, but really? Don’t you think our roster should go a little deeper?”

“You want an astronaut on board?”

“No, but—actually, kinda yeah. Deeper bench, with more specialists on call. Options for the next time we get an alien invasion, a supervillain, and a super soldier experiment gone wrong all in the same week.”

“That’s not regular old SHIELD?” They’d started walking again, and Clint turned to look up at him, lips pursed in thought.

“Frankly?”

“Frankly.”

“No. Even apart from the politics hobbling us, we’re slower, and we’re personnel-inefficient. Takes too many of us to handle the same threat level.”

“But we can just on go as we have and add people as specialists, can’t we?

“You tell me, Mr. Captain America fan. Mr. Avengers putter-together. Fury might have been fine with that, but you—you’re the one that told me there are times we need people who stay out of the shadows. People who can shine, like Captain America.”

“And you.” Clint shifted.

“Nah. I’m nobody’s hero.”

“I don’t even know where to start with that.”

“No, but look: if you had your choice of anyone-- _anyone_ , Phil-- guys with my accuracy _and_ superpowers, would you pick me?”

“I would.”

“You’d be insane. I got in on the ground floor, and I got a chance at this so if it's going somewhere I’m gonna ride it as long as I can, but I’m not a hero. No heros have my body count. But I won’t give up, don’t worry. Sometimes… sometimes the idea that I might get to assemble again is all that keeps me going.”

“Clint, one thing I know for certain about the future: you’ll get the chance to assemble again. We’re not lucky enough to live in a world in which you don’t.”

 

**5-- Changes in the Routine**

 

The walk that morning had changed more between them than just what they called each other. Some of the ways were immediately apparent; some crept up on Phil.

Clint still came over early in the morning, but Phil now made a point to share the SHIELD dispatches with him and ask for his analysis, clearance be damned. He'd wondered, when Clint had first appeared, whether the man meant to ever go back to SHIELD at all. He still wasn't certain what-- of the many possibilities-- was producing the continued bags under Clint's eyes, the haunted look he got in quiet moments. Giving him _work_ to occupy his mind seemed to help, however, and it let Phil track the pattern of his flinches. 

Clint was still interested in strategy, all right, in that particular picking-apart way he had of upending ops with a series of increasingly confounding questions or a casual observation. His approach to logistics was as lilies-of-the-field as ever. He obviously was still conducting a torrid love affair with his bow. And he changed the subject whenever Phil showed him SHIELD's internal discussions about the possibility of eliminating the Mandarin. 

At first, Phil thought there might be some parallels he wasn’t picking up on between the situation with the Mandarin and with Loki. Then he noticed Clint also looking slightly sour when Phil discussed Natasha's latest successful solo op, where she'd taken out two top human traffickers in the Caucasus and most of their base with them. His "good for her" had been nearly a sigh, and then he left the room. He would not talk about it. Watching the rings wink at him from the credenza, Phil decided he didn't have to-- yet.

Fury wasn't going to get his assassin back. Phil was nearly certain of it. But he'd get an Avenger, for whatever that was worth to him. Phil could at least see to that.

"Where are you sleeping, anyway?" Phil asked Clint one day, after coming out in the early morning to find him, once again, ensconced in the kitchen chatting with the caretaker's niece. She had patted his arm as she left.

"Around," Clint shrugged, then looked more closely at Phil and followed his glance to the door. The door out of which the niece had gone. Clint's laugh was unexpected, lighter than Phil had heard in a long time. "Not _there_ around, thank you. Maricela has three kids, you know." Phil frowned, looking back at Clint. 

"I do know. You met them?"

"Sure. I go over sometimes while you nap." Clint paused for a while, his eyes on Phil's, searching for something. Phil wasn't sure exactly what he was even showing in his eyes, but whatever it was, Clint suddenly huffed and looked away. "Her uncle's ex-SHIELD, of course."

"Andres? I know. I met him on a real shit-show of an op in Manila. Not, thank god, the one where he lost his leg. She's ex-SHIELD, too. Followed in his footsteps."

"For a while," Clint said easily. "I remember _her_ from Manila. Years after yours, of course. She's not likely to be charmed by me any time soon. And I'm not interested in that kind of hornet's nest, is what I'm trying to tell you. She and Andres and I, we came to an arrangement regarding my presence here, that's all."

"An arrangement?" Because that was safe to ask about, whereas the question he really wanted to ask-- _and what exactly are you interested in?_ \-- was not. 

"To take care of you," Clint said. His voice was still light, but he turned away abruptly to fidget with the telescope that stood on the credenza as decoration. He looked through it, aimed it down the slope towards the beach, mostly hidden in the tree tops.

"And to not tell Fury where you are?"

"Maybe."

"So do you stay with Andres?"

"Nope."

"Do you stay _anywhere_?" Clint grimaced. Phil sighed, and rubbed his nose.

"I have a guest room, you know." It was a very nice guest room, in fact, and Maricela had started making up the bed a few mornings ago.

"I know."

"You're using it. Starting tonight. That is _not_ negotiable," he added, when Clint looked mutinous. 

Clint left when Phil's PT came, and returned with a duffel bag. It and his bow case and, presumably, Clint himself, ended up in the guest bedroom. The bed never seemed to get too rumpled; the woven cotton spread never got turned down. The french windows, framed in light gauze, were often open to the night, and whether or not or where exactly Clint slept was still anyone's guess.

He certainly showered. Phil knew _that_ because he walked in on him one afternoon a few days later.  
____

They’d walked so far that morning, following the creek, they’d made it down to the beach. The sky was clear, nearly the same intense pacific blue as the water, the sand was black and the wind ruffled in the palm stands and the shadowed tangle of red mangrove at the creek’s outlet.

Salt water curled around their toes and sand silted up around them, as they watched the horizon and talked about the World Security Council’s latest move in their three-dimensional chess game with Fury, which had been to forbid SHIELD from joining on the hunt for the Mandarin. Ostensibly, SHIELD had too little manpower, and needed to focus on rebuilding. 

Reading between the lines, Phil foresaw a couple new WSC-related missions in the offing for Natasha. He mentioned that to Clint, who nodded quietly, then added: 

“Think it’s bad now, imagine if they try to pull shit like that when the Avengers need to assemble again.”

“They tried it, when Loki came,” Phil said, digging his feet deeper into the sand and watching the tiny whirlpools where waves came over the new depressions. “Fury was able to put them off long enough to pull everyone together. We’ve handled them in the past when there were, um, strategic differences.”

“We’ve never been at odds this bad in the past, unless I didn’t have clearance to know it.” Phil shook his head to negate that.

“You’re not wrong; when they chose the nuclear option, well--” Phil winced in anticipation of what was about to come out of his mouth-- “there was bound to be fallout. I’d have found a way to warn you, I hope you know that. Strike Team Delta performed enough missions on their behalf, after all; it would have been detrimental to keep you in the dark.”

“It’s not going to get better, is it?” 

Phil didn’t answer, didn’t think he needed to. Clint thought for a while, and grunted. His eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses and that fucking hat, his face was otherwise smooth. “I _might_ actually go find Stark later, see what he’s up to. Or maybe Banner. I liked Banner. Can’t hurt to make friends, right?”

“Oh?” Phil was very proud of how casual that sounded, coming out.

Clint glanced over at him, golden in the morning light, and quirked one corner of his mouth.

“‘Oh.’ Not yet, though. Got unfinished business here.” And he turned back to the ocean, redundantly shaded his eyes for a moment, then said:

“We’d better head back. Tide’s already turned. We’ll be soaked if we stay here.”

Phil looked down to find the waves had already reached the rolled-up edge of his chinos, and nodded.

The walk back, up their well-trodden track beside the creek, proved to Phil that he was not ready for that unfinished business, yet. He might be perfectly alright for daily use, but he couldn’t remember a time in the past when a simple stroll of several miles, uphill, granted, had wiped him out the way that had.

Clint had carefully refrained from saying anything as he brought Phil a glass of water and a plate of mangoes, but five minutes later he came back into the room and announced that the PT had begged off for the afternoon.

So apparently the little arrangement he had with Andres and Maricela extended to Fury’s hand picked rehabilitation team, as well. The only people that Fury had given clearance to know Phil was alive, before he’d been reinstated, and Clint had somehow drawn them into a conspiracy that involved doing things behind Phil’s back for his own good _and_ leaving Fury out of the loop. And he’d managed to that despite the therapist’s near complete lack of English. 

Back when they were a team, he’d thought he’d known how good Clint was at this sort of underhanded networking, Phil mused. As it turned out, he’d been hiding the extent of his talent behind Natasha all this time. 

He might have had other thoughts following that, had not sleep crept up on him and sandbagged him from behind.  
____

He woke up in mid-afternoon, the sweat and salt water from the morning having dried into an insubstantial layer of grunge all over him. His fingers were still sticky from mango juice, his mouth was like cotton, and his head had that overstuffed feeling that too much sunlight and too much sleep can produce. Nothing a shower couldn’t fix.

Clint had apparently had the same idea, Phil realized as soon as he opened the door to the bathroom. Clint also hadn’t bothered to close the shower curtain, since the shower itself was a tiled cubicle nearly large enough to lay down in diagonally, and thus posed no leaking threat. 

“Um,” Phil said, well aware that he’d made a strategic error in choosing to get undressed before crossing the hall to the bathroom. Where it was possible to ignore the all-too-natural reaction to those gorgeous arms, that powerful chest and smooth back, when he was wearing actual clothing (and-- crucially-- expecting it), a towel was no defense against this kind of ambush.

The mere sight of Clint, drenched, relaxed, too damn thin these days (it wasn’t helping to remember the last point Phil had for comparison), and-- oh, fuck-- turning those insanely wide, smiling eyes on him, was going to be enough to kill him (again).

“Hello, there,” Clint said, over the top of Phil’s stuttered:

“Sorry. I didn’t realize-- I’ll leave. I can take a shower later.”

“Huh,” Clint was clearly not paying attention to anything coming out of his mouth-- his eyes were a good deal further southward, which was not where Phil wanted them right now. (Well, it was where he _wanted_ them, but….) “Have you been holding out on me, Phil, or should we be telling your doctors that you’ve made another step on your recovery?”

“We are not telling them _anything about this_ , Clint,” Phil snapped, putting his hands on his hips instead of where he really wanted to cup them. “And this has been happening again for a little bit, I just… I don’t have the stamina to do much about it.” Unfortunately. Very unfortunately. And if having a shirtless Clint wandering the grounds hadn’t helped, this was going to be sheer torture. “Certainly nothing worthy of post alien invasion sex,” he added, despite himself.

Clint’s smirk widened and got, if possible, more dirty. 

“C’mere,” he said. 

“I--”

“C’mere,” Clint waved an inviting hand, his other arm still braced against the wall. “If you don’t get some exercise, you’ll never get your full range of motion back, and that would be a damn shame.” When Phil didn’t move, he reached out of the shower and slid one rough finger down Phil’s shoulder, his arm, the inside of his elbow, his forearm, and clasped his hand. He tugged.

There had probably been some intermediate step Phil wasn’t remembering, because he was pretty sure he hadn’t in fact teleported into the shower and the curve of Clint’s arms, plus his towel was missing. Clint’s lips behind his ear, nibbling and brushing, weren’t helping him put himself back together.

“How’s your heart?” Clint murmured into the shell of his ear, before nipping at his lobe.

“What?” Phil gasped.

“Your heart,” the nuzzling hadn’t stopped, but there was a new tension in Clint’s body, a sense he’d leashed himself in a little. “Just how excited can I get you without risking… um, without you going all….” His sigh was warm against the wet skin of Phil’s neck, and the hand pressing Phil’s wrist into the wall faltered a bit.

“Oh, it’s-- I think I’m okay? I’m not going to faint on you, or anything, as long as you keep it kind of low key. I mean, if you still want to." 

It turned out laughter against his neck made him ticklish. Phil shuddered involuntarily.

“If I _want_ to? Look down, you damned supposed-to-be-a-super spy.” Phil looked down, where the water ran between their bodies, splitting as it came across obstacles to its downwards progress. And yes, it did look quite a bit like Clint wanted to. 

“Ah,” Phil managed, eloquently. Clint hadn’t stopped laughing, and Phil hadn’t stopped staring. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Clint erect and waiting for him, the familiar fat curve of his cock straining up from the smooth planes of his pelvis to say hello. It just _felt_ like it. 

“All clear now?” Clint whispered into his neck. “Good.” And he brought Phil’s other wrist up against the tile of the shower as well, then notched his thigh in between Phil’s, undulating up until the entire length of their bodies were pressed together and their cocks met and slid. Phil felt his knees tremble as Clint rocked them together, and he buried his face in the hot curve of Clint’s shoulder and let himself go, let the cool water run down his back as Clint set the rest of him on fire. 

Eventually Clint released his wrists, and Phil felt his arms flop down around Clint’s shoulders, his hands spread to feel the play of the man’s back muscles as they shifted under his slick skin. The motion of Clint’s body on his felt like sunlight and the tide coming in. Clint’s shoulders shifted again beneath his hands as he brought one hand between them and gathered them both up. 

Phil looked down as Clint started to stroke them both in a long, slow rhythm, watched fascinated as the heads of their cocks appeared and disappeared with the movement of his hand. Clint shifted until his forehead was pressed against Phil’s and their noses touched. His breath was hot and ragged on Phil’s lips, and Phil knew his matched it. He looked up to find Clint’s eyes half-lidded, as fixated on the movement below as Phil had been. He realized he was shuddering when Clint darted a look back up at him.

“All good,” he breathed, and Clint nodded against him, still watching his eyes, and sped up. 

Their combined breathing quickly came to match the pace of Clint’s fist, or maybe the opposite happened, and Phil dug his hands into Clint’s ass, partly to hold him closer, partly to hold himself up. Clint came first, his hand shaking uncontrollably and his head and shoulders snapping back, the water washing him clean as he came. Phil watched him, breath caught, bringing his own hand up almost as an afterthought to make the few strokes necessary to send himself over the edge.

It had been a long time since he’d been able to do more than half-heartedly masturbate, and when he fell, he fell off the cliff, his legs buckling and entire body collapsing into Clint, who wasn’t at his steadiest at the moment. They ended up in a long, controlled tumble to the floor of the shower, lying tangled together as Phil still pulsed weakly.  
“I’m all right,” Phil managed in a stunned tone when Clint poked him. He was rewarded with Clint’s laughter again, exhausted but genuine. 

“That’s the understatement of the century,” Clint said. Feeling the endorphins rushing through his system, like waking up from hibernation, Phil had to agree.  
It only occurred to him long after they’d dressed and were at dinner just how without precedent the whole thing was.

Clint Barton, Phil had always thought, was only situationally gay. The circumstances under which Clint showed interest in fucking a man were absurdly specific, and usually evolved the same way. At least, they had since that first night, after an op gone horribly wrong in Quito, when Clint had grabbed his handler by the lapels, backed him against a wall, growled "thanks for not dying, jackass," and then smashed his mouth against Phil's. 

The required elements included extreme physical danger, near-death experiences, aliens and/or cataclysmic events, and Agent Phil Coulson. There was clearly at least aesthetic appreciation on Clint's part as well as friendship, but Phil had never flattered himself that there was more there than two friends grabbing onto life by the throat. 

Once, Clint had suggested-- had seemed to suggest-- that perhaps the death/aliens/apocalypse factor could be dispensed with, and Phil had brushed it off without really thinking. In the heat of the moment was fine (was _amazing_ ) but a regular sort of fuckbudd-- friends with benefits-- arrangement didn't seem likely to do their professional relationship much good. And that relationship was one of the underpinnings of his life. Clint had trusted him, he had trusted Clint, they'd lived out of each other's pockets (and Natasha's) until there were-- he'd thought-- few surprises left, and next to no judgements. 

That relationship was gone now, though, and in its place were Clint's hands on his cock, his wet body pressed entirely up against him, his eyes locked on Phil's as he came, and not an alien god or broken hotel room in sight. It strongly suggested that Phil needed to rethink a few things he thought he knew.

On their next long ramble down to the creek, in the middle of discussing the implications of a string of apparent spontaneous combustions, Clint took Phil's hand as they navigated the switchbacks.

And forgot to drop it afterwards.

Handjobs before hand-holding seemed a backwards way of going about things, but Phil didn't say anything.

 

**6-- Forming New Allegiances**

 

Phil woke up next to Clint one morning several weeks later, stretching each of his joints individually and thoroughly before rolling out of bed. Clint slept on, his cheek and forehead buried in the white cotton of the pillow, his chest bare to the morning sun and the bedspread draped loosely over his hip. 

He slid his boxers on and began the wander to his own room, stopping short when he realized that Director Fury was sitting in the living room drinking coffee and thumbing through Phil's copy of _The Turquoise Lament_. He glanced up to find Phil watching him from the doorway, and looked him up and down. Phil snorted and left to find his pants.

Over the course of the past few weeks, he and Clint had done a few more _strength building exercises_ of various sorts, and-- nearly unrelatedly, it sometime seemed-- they'd also progressed from handholding to actual kissing, to occasionally cuddling on the veranda or even in the hammock at sunset.

And on the Clint mental health front-- and Phil had so many goddamn open fronts at the moment he felt like a Balkan state-- he'd gone on the offensive. A few nights ago, he'd wandered into Clint's room, where the man had retreated after a nice leisurely blowjob, and climbed into his bed. Clint, sitting on top of the covers and frowning over the book Phil had just finished reading, had turned to blink at him. 

Phil had reached over and turned off the light. 

A while later, he drifted awake to realize Clint had vacated the bed. He was now located on the veranda, perched on a lounge chair and staring into space. Phil slid into the lounge chair next to him, curled up as best he could in the creaky wicker, and closed his eyes.

"Okay, Phil, this is stupid. You need your sleep," Clint said after a while, grumpy. 

"So d'you." Phil drawled. 

"I'm not the one still recovering from open heart surgery and whatever else they did to you."

"You're also not sleeping regularly at all right now, except for about an hour after I get you off."

"So you're going to follow me around and nap at me until I get some rest?"

"If that's what it takes."

"Fuck. I'm going back to bed."

"Good thought."

Phil followed him into his room and slid back under the sheets, looking up at him expectantly.

"I'll lie down, but I'm not gonna sleep."

"Okay."

"And when I have nightmares and kick you, no one gets to blame me."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Fine." Clint collapsed onto the bed and pulled the sheets over himself, turning his back to Phil, grumbling to himself.

He hadn't slept that night, nor much the night after, but he'd seemed a little less haunted-- finally-- in the mornings. Last night, Phil had hit on the expedient of switching sides with Clint, putting himself between the man and the door. That-- and the blowjob, probably-- seemed to have relaxed him for long enough for exhaustion to overwhelm him. Clint had slept more or less peacefully all night.

And now Director Fury was in their-- in Phil's--living room, had been there for a while apparently, and Clint was probably never going to sleep again, because look what happened when he did. Phil knew resentment was a petty emotion, but that didn't stop him one bit. 

"You made a decision yet?" Fury asked when Phil came into the kitchen. He'd migrated to Phil's kitchen table, and was sitting watching insects flit by the gardenias underneath the window. Phil was now mostly dressed. He had remained shirtless out of spite-- the long pink weals of the scar on his chest a silent reminder of just how much Phil had already sacrificed for SHIELD.

"I want a new team and full operational control," he said, pouring himself the last cup of coffee from the french press and grabbing a brioche from the plate next to it. 

"What for?"

"At least in part, " Phil said, sitting down across from Fury, "to identify and recruit people with skills that might come in useful, either as specialists or even… at a higher level."

"You expect to find many?"

"No-- but that's a secondary concern, anyway. Let me tell you my primary goal," Phil said, leaning forward to talk. Fury grunted, but waved a hand for him to continue. 

The genesis of the idea had been in that first conversation he'd had with Clint about the Avengers and astronauts. They weren't his concern anymore, it had been made clear to him, any more than his prized little strike team was. 

Ah, but there was still plenty of work to be done at a lower profile for a small, flexible, responsive team, primarily investigative and free of all red tape. A team that could find emerging oddities before they got to Avenger status either as obstacles, enemies, or recruits. That could investigate the weird shit, close down the shady organizations, encourage the promising ones, and throw a lifeline to people who’d wandered into strangeness out of their depth. It could bring in people with special powers, contain or train or take them down as the case warranted. Maybe even get those with promise registered with SHIELD, location known in case of need (be it SHIELD or Avengers related).

"Registration?" Clint had said when Phil had presented the idea. "You think anyone's going to go for that?"

"I think, presented in the right way," Phil started, "people could be persuaded." Clint shook his head.

"Starting to sound like the selective service-- or something worse." He looked Phil in the eyes for a long moment, then reached out to stroke his cheek. "I know, you wouldn't mean it that way. It would just happen, and someone would use it against them eventually. Not you. Probably."

"That… you have a point.” Phil thought for a moment about what the WSC would do with that kind of information. “But just letting it go doesn't sound like a good idea either. There are far worse things we could be doing. Would you prefer we just tag and release them all with trackers in their butts?" 

"Stay good, Phil," Clint said, laughing. "No ass-trackers."

Fury, unfortunately, kind of loved the idea of a registry. Clint was going to kill him all over again. Well, Phil could fight that battle later. The general thing-- this new team, at Level 7, recruiting left at his discretion-- was settled between them over coffee, pastries, and papaya. Fury was more generous than he ought to have been, clearly relieved that Phil had finally made a decision.

Phil was determined to make him pay for that. He already had a nice old jet in mind.

It was Clint who'd suggested that a team like that would be spending so much time in travel that it almost made sense just to dig out one of SHIELD’s old planes for them to live in. He'd been joking. 

Phil was not.

____

 

“Fancy meeting you here, Agent Barton,” Fury’s voice drifted in from the veranda, waking Phil from the nap he’d badly needed after a long morning’s negotiation. He froze for a moment, hearing Clint’s rough mumble as he greeted the Director, his footsteps thump on the deck. A chair scraped just outside the line of view of the french window, creaked as a body lowered itself down. After a moment, another chair scraped, creaked.

Phil had gone to his own room after lunch, but had somehow found himself lying on Clint’s bed to nap instead, telling himself that it was cooler in the heat of the afternoon. And he wanted to make sure Clint’s effects weren’t in plain sight.

And he just needed to lie down for a moment, just a moment, with his nose buried in the sheets inhaling the lingering smell of sex and Clint and himself.

“Am I going to find half of SHIELD’s psych team descending on me, Director?” Clint’s voice was deceptively light. Phil imagined him sitting in the lounge chair, tense, braced against the need to flee.

“I told you once that your location was not being tracked. It still isn’t, Barton.”

“That a fact?”

“It is. And won't be unless the time comes when I decide you’re enough of a danger to yourself-- or others-- that tracking you down becomes a priority.”

“And then I’ll find out just how thoroughly I haven’t been being tracked?”

“Maybe. For now--” there was a brief pause, and Phil wished he was able to see the body language being exchanged. “I won’t bother. Do what you need to do, until the work is done here.”

“When will that be?” More silence.

“On the SHIELD side of things, I’ll need some time to get things arranged according to Coulson’s extortionary demands. On this side-- I suppose you know better than I do.”

“I wouldn’t say that, I’m sure his caretakers are keeping you well informed.”

“About some things they are.” There would be a glare there, on Fury’s part, and exaggerated expression of innocence on Clint’s. More silence. Then:

“You do realize you will not be a part of Coulson’s new team, Barton.” Phil winced, and tried to untangle himself quietly from the duvet someone had thrown over him while he slept.

“I know that,” Clint said with remarkably little pause or inflection. “I’m not really your guy for an investigative unit. You don’t need the world’s best marksman for that, do you?” Phil froze halfway out of bed.

“I’m glad you recognize that.” 

“I’m well aware of the limits of my skill set, sir.” His voice was as flat as he could possibly make it, and Phil closed his eyes, briefly imagined taking the man into his arms and glaring over his head at Fury. 

“And what about you then? We could still use that skill set back at SHIELD. You and the Black Widow are safe enough there now; the fallout’s mostly moved past you.”

“And onto you?”

“Where it belongs. I have lots of projects that could use someone who sees better from a distance.”

“Always room for another assassin, sir?” Phil could feel the sting in those words from where he was sitting, alone behind gauze curtains. Fury’s silence stretched long in the summer heat. Clint sighed, finally.

“I’ll let you know when I know.”

“I can be satisfied with that, for the moment.” Fury told him.

Phil made a note-- a very firm note-- to have another Talk or three with Fury after dinner. And then he got up to tiptoe back to his own room, before the two came in off the porch. As he did, he heard someone-- Clint, probably-- begin to get up, heard Fury’s voice, warm with amusement, say:

“And Barton? Nice hat.”

____

 

That night, Clint really did kick him in his sleep, in the throes of a nightmare that convulsed him and left him open-mouthed like he was trying to scream, but silent. Phil fell off the bed at the first kick, coming awake tangled in blankets on the floor. He pulled himself to his knees and reached carefully for Clint’s hair, stroking it gently and murmuring nonsense until Clint finally calmed. Then he climbed back onto the bed and curled up next to the man, careful not to pin him. Clint turned towards him with a sob, eyes still tightly shut, and settled in with his face buried into the pillow just millimeters from Phil’s chest.

They went back to the beach the next day. 

Phil sat on a stump near the shore to watch the waves and the sea birds, and fingered Clint's rings in his pocket while he ogled Clint practicing with his bow. Clint filled the top of a coconut palm with arrows, then shinned himself up the tree, retrieved them all (and no few coconuts) and leapt from further up than he should have, tucking into a roll and ending up curled into a perfect ball between Phil’s legs. He stretched up to kiss Phil firmly, then settled back. 

“I’m still not blaming you," Phil said. Clint froze for a long moment, the hand suspended in air that had been creeping to meet Phil’s on his shoulder. 

“Ah, context?” he said after a moment. Phil snorted.

“Nightmare. Kicking.”

“Oh.”

“He can find projects for you that don’t involve assassinating people.” Clint’s shoulders slumped. “You knew I was listening,” Phil told him. “You set it up that way.”

“I know. Do I talk in my sleep, or have I been transparent?”

“Moderately transparent.” Phil pulled Clint’s hand into his shoulder, and cupped his own over it. 

“I don’t want accommodations because I’ve gone soft,” Clint whispered. Phil didn’t think, just whapped him upside the head. It was never going to go in a best practices manual, but for the moment it startled a snort out of Clint.

“Right. Sure. Because it’s weakness to lose a taste for killing after--” why he’d ever thought there was a good way to end that sentence, Phil did not know, but the floundering he was doing was probably even worse.

“-- after slaughtering so many of my coworkers,” Clint finished for him, still staring out at the ocean from behind his dark glasses. Yep. It had been a really bad idea to start that sentence.

“That’s not how I would have put it.”

“That’s how it was, Phil. And no-- I know, _it was Loki_. Do you know how tired I am of hearing that? As if it wipes out the fact that it was _my_ hand that put arrows through them? Took out their engines? Led their killers to them?”

“Clint, you can’t--” Phil slid down onto the sand behind Clint and curled himself up around the archer, circling both wrists with his hands and squeezing. He half expected Clint to shiver to pieces under him.

“ _I don’t blame myself_ ,” Clint spat out, but he pulled Phil’s arms closer. “That would be easy, right? That’s what everyone wants it to be, because then once I’d really been convinced it was Loki, I’d be okay, I’d be okay to _kill more people_. But I can’t, Phil. I see their blood in my dreams. I know their names, fuck, I know the names of their _kids_ , their partners, their _dogs_ , for Chrissake. I can’t unsee that. I can’t… I can’t take it down to the range and get rid of it with a quiver or two of arrows anymore. I can’t tell myself they were all bad people, all scum and all people who deserved it. I have fucking lost my taste for blood, and that’s not exactly something you can make a reasonable accommodation for.”

Phil settled his chin on Clint’s shoulder, cheek to cheek, and gave himself a few moments to just breathe, willing himself to relax, to melt against the tension in Clint’s body, to wear it down. 

“It’s not a disability, Clint. Truth to tell, it may make you more sane than some of the rest of us.”

“It _is_ a disability in an assassin.”

“You’re _not_ an assassin. You’re a _marksman_ , always were. You just happened to pick up a lot of missions that involved eliminating threats. But you have so much beyond your aim. You're a senior agent of SHIELD. You can plan, you can analyze, you can infiltrate, you can lead, you’re not phased by weird shit, and there's so much you have to offer that doesn’t need to involve… look. You’d still take out anyone who was trying to kill me, right?”

“Without a second thought. But, Phil--”

“And you still want to be an Avenger, so I take it you’re okay with whatever means it takes to stop alien invasions?”

“Or _human_ invasions, for that matter, Phil, I’m not suicidal.”

“Then what makes you any different from me?” Clint finally reacted, twisted in his arms until he could stare at Phil, incredulous.

“Are you kidding me here? What kind of dumbass question is that?” Phil raised an eyebrow at him.

“One waiting for an answer.”

“I, but,” Clint spluttered. “That’s like asking what makes me different from _Stark_ , Phil.”

“Having endured what both of you think is witty banter, I’ve asked myself that question once or twice,” Phil said, deadpan as he could make himself. It startled a little soundless huff from Clint.

“Can you be serious, please?”

“What makes you think I’m not? What makes you different from me?”

“I’m not a strategic genius and badass handler? I don’t have Fury giving me my own team just to keep me from getting pissed off? I don’t look like sex incarnate whenever I wear a three-piece?”

“Um. That last part is debatable,” Phil said, filing that remark away in his own little mental tickler file to be explored later. “I wouldn’t be too sure about how far Fury would go to keep you, either, Clint. And if nothing else, if _nothing_ else, you are still an Avenger. Are you going to tell me you honestly think that a reluctance to kill unless forced is going to be a _liability_ in a superhero?”

“Can we use any other word than ‘superhero’? Any day now, I feel like I’m going to be forced into spandex or a cape, or god forbid a tunic.”

“You’d look great in spandex, and you know it. Look, you’ve already been valuable to SHIELD, just by coming here and helping me. Fury clearly thinks so; he’s just too much of a bastard to say that to your face. You don’t have to decide anything now. We’ve got time yet before we’re forced to go back to the world.” Phil laid his lips gently on the side of Clint’s neck, and Clint arched into the touch.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Reality can wait a little longer. Do we have anywhere to be this afternoon?”

“Clint. We’re in Tahiti. On a beach. Only a very limited number of people know where we are. And don’t think I don’t know you already told Miri not to come for my PT this afternoon. Where the hell would we possibly have to be?”

“Nowhere. I just like hearing it, right now.” Clint stretched out a little in Phil’s arms, slumping down to lay against his shoulder. “I’ll try not to kick you again tonight.”

“I still won’t blame you if you do.”

 

**7-- Last Reunion of Strike Team Delta**

 

Fury's second coming marked a turning point in Phil's therapy regimen, and his PT came less often as the volume of SHIELD material that he received increased. Phil was being sent progress reports, intelligence briefings, specs for the retrofitting of a jet, and candidate files. The blueprints and papers began to outgrow their little locked filing cabinet, and Maricela would occasionally find a paper on the floor next to it and tsk disapprovingly as she gathered it up. 

Clint still went out to shoot in the mornings, leaving Phil time to himself, but he came back earlier and earlier, letting Phil go over everything with him. He waded into the morass of candidate files with Phil over lunches, which often stretched halfway through the afternoon. Phil had made a point of it, when he'd first asked the favor, saying "look how much you've already helped-- you've got me a jet."

"You know who would be amazing who I don't see in here, Phil," Clint said one day, tapping with a cheese straw at Phil's current matrix of candidates, skill sets, and ratings, "Melinda May."

"She's not a field agent anymore. For reasons I suspect you can sympathise with."

"Yeah, I understand that. I don't care. This is her kind of show, top to bottom. And she… she'd keep you from doing something dumbass like getting yourself stabbed again. Don't tell me she wouldn't come if you called, I know your history."

"You'd feel better if I had May on my team, you're saying?"

"I would."

"Well that's good, since she was the first person I thought of. That's why she doesn't have a candidate file here; I'm quite sure I’m asking for her already."

"Good, then let's go back to your espionage and sniper candidates."

"Oh god, Clint," Phil buried his head in his hands briefly. "No, let's not. This hasn't ended well for us so far. None of them are as accurate as you are, none of them are as skilled as Natasha, can we just start with that and work with what we have?"

"And can you pass the cheese straws while you're at it, Clint?" Natasha Romanov said, settling herself down on the floor at the far end of the coffee table. Clint looked up, blinked, and passed her the basket of cheese twists. 

"Something to drink, too, Nat?" he asked casually as he got up, and he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead as he went into the kitchen. The clink of glasses sounded faintly from the other room. Phil watched her, still, until she looked in his direction. Her face was a careful blank, but her eyes were searching him, and he searched her right back. She was in better shape than Clint, clearly, but still a little pale, a little tired, a lot more keyed up without the two of them at her back.

Clint was great on solo ops: a little flashy, stupidly brave, often unorthodox, and Phil told himself that he was competent enough, but Natasha had always been in a league of her own. She could think on her feet and turn impossible situations into gold in ways that he couldn't believe even long enough to write them down. In many ways, honestly, Phil and Clint had held her back in Strike Team Delta. Had weighed her just enough to slow her down a step or two.

On the other hand, they’d also anchored her, given her friends watching her six, made for her peace for a space. A space he'd destroyed by having the unfortunate luck to get stabbed by a god. The look she gave Phil now was all the worse for being so resigned.

"I'm sorry," he said, quietly, to those eyes. "I really thought you knew."

"Wrong apology," she responded. He opened his mouth, shut it, realized he was beginning to glower back at her. She watched him until he crossed his arms, then smiled. 

"I'm not going to apologize to you for something you-- or even Clint-- were just as likely to have done had you been in my place. Anymore than I expect him to apologize to me." 

"Hrmph," she said, and then "since you've already got Agent May picked out for the team, you can take out these three specialists," and she removed a few profiles from the coffee table. "Too many shared skillsets. Clint?" 

Clint handed her a glass of sparkling water and reviewed the profiles.

"Yeah. And, um, Coleman over there. His sense of humor runs to dick jokes, you'll kill him before the first week is out." He flipped the profile out of the sheet.

"I can handle a dick joke," Phil murmured in token protest. Mostly, he was watching Clint and Natasha move around each other, their bodies relaxing ever so subtly as they fell into orbit. 

"He still thinks that one about the three guys and the genie is funny, Phil, he never made it past the playground. If you didn't kill him--"

"Melinda would. Right. Yes. Moving on. Ward?" He twisted the profile towards them. Clint read over Natasha's shoulder as she took it in-- he'd already seen the details once.

"I'm not sure this is an argument I want to get in the middle of," Natasha said, pushing the file away.

"What argument?" Clint asked, at the same time as Phil said:

"I'm not sure what you're talking about," and then they glared at each other. 

Natasha looked from one to the other, and sighed.

"His espionage skills are... adequate," she said, returning to the file. "They would do for your purpose." They were, in fact, stellar. Would have been right at the top in any agency that did not employ an ex-Red Room assassin and spy. Said spy frowned as she kept reading. "Marksmanship very good. Not up to your standard, Clint, I know, but no one is. You can't let that put you off." Clint opened his mouth, shut it, raised a finger.

"Clint's been the one telling me I should take him," Phil said, trying to make his voice as bland as oatmeal. Clint shrugged off Natasha's skeptical glance.

"I figure you're right. He combines skill sets you and I used to provide. Efficient that way. Phil doesn't like him because he's got shitty people skills," Clint said.

"They can't be that bad," Natasha responded, then looked back down at the report. And up. "Clint... that's an actual... okay, seriously." Clint gave her an _I told you so_ kind of shrug.

"To be fair, Hill drew that. Took us awhile to figure out what it was. I was going for sea urchin, but Clint thinks those are knives," Phil threw in, just as she was on the verge of returning to the folder. The look she gave him in return made him feel like a beetle, stuck in a collecting case, waiting to find out if it was going to get pinned to a shadow box. "We might have been a bit tipsy when we were discussing it," he confessed after a while. "Hill would have a fit if we picked him." He realized as he said it that he didn’t sound nearly as dampened by that as he ought.

"I think the shitty people skills are a plus," Clint mock-confided in Natasha. "He’ll make a good foil for Phil. At least he’ll always know whether the guy's playing straight. And as long as he keeps his mouth shut, he's got his looks to fall back on." Natasha turned her look on him, and he deflected it with his usual hurt puppy routine. Phil pulled Ward's file back to him, looked more closely at it, at the figures and the tall-dark-and-sulking thing he had going on in his profile picture.

"He's never going to get my jokes," he sighed. "I want you to understand that this is a sacrifice."  
____

Over a dinner of fresh fish, a green papaya salad, and wine, Natasha filled them in on her recent operations, from the last time she’d seen Clint in Portland to the just-finished op in Indonesia that had brought her their way.

The general laissez-faire attitude he and Clint had lately taken towards classified information clearly extended to her, and Phil found it hard to care. 

Each of them had always had other missions, other responsibilities at SHIELD, but their shared missions, the ones that were just them, had been the best parts of his job. If they couldn’t be Strike Team Delta anymore, he realized as he watched his former agents bicker about the fallout from a WSC mole hunt in Bucharest, they could at least give themselves this last little time to pretend. 

This last little time when it was the three of them against the world.

And it seemed the least he could give them to take out into the world with them, when they were going to be barred from mentioning him to anyone at all. Fury had given his final word that Phil’s unexpectedly extant status was going to remain Level 7 classified, and he had resisted all Phil’s efforts-- and those of Sitwell and several other agents-- to convince him otherwise. 

So if Clint and Natasha were going to be burdened with lying about him to all their fellow agents and a fragile new team that wasn’t yet a team at all—just a group of people who’d come together once to face the end of the world—he could give them as much of himself as possible, this one last time.  
____

Dinner turned into little truffles on the porch, things that Natasha had brought up with her from a shop in Papeete. She and and Phil had the lounge chairs, and Clint sat cross-legged on the porch between them, slumped forward and playing with his rings. 

“Basically, Stark has more than a dozen suits now, as near as I can tell,” she said. “I was only able to get so far without him noticing. He’s keeping them so far under wraps that not even Pepper knows about them. Or Colonel Rhodes.” 

“It’s… one way of handling things,” Clint said softly, and Natasha looked down at him.

“I suppose it is,” she said. “Or avoiding them. Either way, not so good a sign. I hesitate to give too much to Fury right now.” She looked closely at her glass of wine, swirled it and watched the slide of liquid down its curves. “And I hesitate to know what, if anything, I should say to Pepper.” 

“Your instincts are good,” Phil told her, leaning forward. “Do what you think is best. Pepper is likely already worried.” Natasha nodded.

“I don’t have time to make it my business,” she said reluctantly. “There’s too much else going on. I wish…” she stopped short, because Natasha rarely _wished_ anything. If it could happen, she would make it. If it could not, it wasn’t worth wishing for. Clint brushed a hand against her knee, and she knocked into it. “It would have been better if you could have been the one talking with Pepper, Coulson.” 

“I…” he sighed. “If I could let her know without Stark hearing of it… That would be tempting. But I can’t do that to her. And I can’t… I’m not willing to second-guess Director Fury so baldly on this one. I’m not willing to jeopardize the new team just because I miss bantering with the partner of one of the people he’s most worried about. I’m not willing to jeopardize _Stark_ and his stability at this point, either.” 

A gentle weight on his thigh had him looking down; Clint was resting his head on his lap, not watching him. Not watching much of all, except whatever he could see in the darkness beyond the porch lights. Phil realized his hand had come up to rest in Clint’s hair, fingernails scratching in tiny circles on his scalp. 

Natasha glanced at Clint, at Phil’s hand, then up at Phil. He found himself receiving another of her long, considering stares, felt his fingers slow their stroking, his body tensing.  
“Have you seen Banner or Rogers?” Clint asked, breaking their concentration. Natasha looked down at him. 

“Rogers, no. But if I’m reading Fury right,” and she was, of course, “I’ll be seeing him soon. Banner, yes, a couple of times, when I was visiting Stark and Pepper. He is still… _enjoying_ may not be the right word… _in_ Stark’s company, when the man is in New York. It’s keeping him safe, and it is, I think, good for him. He’s the one you should visit first, Clint, when you go back.” Natasha being Natasha, it was equally likely she’d divined Clint’s reason for asking out of thin air as it was that they’d been in communication. She was watching Clint as she said it, plainly looking for any reaction to _when you go back_. Clint winced a little. At this point that was less a tell than a bald acknowledgement of the truth, and Phil let his fingernails dig a little deeper, just for a moment. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said quietly. “You don’t disagree with Fury.”

“I don’t, as distasteful as I find it,” Natasha replied, catching his meaning. “If it were only a matter of losing face and trust with Stark and Rogers, that would be a different matter. For all the work we think we’ve done drawing the WSC’s teeth, building backroom alliances, I hesitate to see what would happen if they got hold of your new team and the knowledge it’s going to have. And if they got hold of you, Coulson, that would follow quickly. I do not pretend to know how thoroughly they are under control; if I did-- if I knew what he was hiding from you-- from us-- I might feel differently.”

Phil looked closely at her, and made a little sound in the back of his throat. 

“I’d like to know that, too. It’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room. All I can think to do right now is pretend we don’t know, and see what falls out. Agreed?”

Natasha pondered that for a moment, and nodded.

“So long as you know that you don’t know. This isn’t something to move on before we have our footing, I agree. Something is coming. Something is very wrong, and I do not know enough to second guess Fury on this.”

“He can’t control it forever,” Clint said.

“He can control it however long he wants,” Phil told him, quietly. “But it will become absurd and the expense too high after a point. I’m not… you and I have done too much work on this new team to risk it now, before it even gets started. And all your worries about tracking individuals and malicious uses of our cases are only compounded if the WSC knows what we’re doing.”

“The longer he tries to control it, the worse the fallout’s going to be when it explodes.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you.”

“And I’m… not disagreeing with you,” Clint said, finally turning to look up at him. The dark circles under his eyes had lightened these last weeks, his frame was filling back out, and it was truly unfair how dark his eyes were in the low light. “This sucks, Phil.”

“Amen to that,” Phil muttered quietly. In her chair next to them, Natasha shifted, setting down her wine glass to lean towards Clint and return his earlier knee-stroke. 

“That’s all of us,” she said.  
_____

Natasha’s brief visit brought with it a kind of chill, and Phil found himself clinging to Clint at night as if cold breezes were slipping in through the cracks in the ranch house. Clint’s sleep grew disordered again, and Phil blessed his returning strength the night he had to stop Clint’s fist just in front of his face. He said nothing about it.

Their walks grew longer, Miri the PT stopped coming altogether, long after her visits had become mere formalities. The flow of paperwork and intelligence from SHIELD began to contain fewer blueprints and more potential case files. 

Clint begged off helping with those, and began to spend some of their plotting time curled up around a laptop that had appeared from, seemingly, nowhere, poking and chatting and emailing and erasing. He spent several hours on the phone with Sitwell, carefully out of Phil’s hearing. He was picking up the threads of his personal network, Phil knew, and tried to think of that as a good sign. 

Still, it was a shock to walk behind Clint and catch a glimpse of an apartment rental website on the screen. Clint had used to stay in whatever quarters SHIELD considered suitable for his status, moving up from the probationary agent’s quarters all the way to one of the private apartments in a SHIELD-maintained building. This did not look like one of those.  
He hadn’t given Fury any answer yet, but that could wait until he was back in New York. The most he’d promised Natasha before she left, pitching his voice so that Phil, hanging back tactfully, could still hear, was that he would not be quitting SHIELD. Yet.

Phil might have _suggested_ to Fury that when the two of them did talk, one particular sort of mission ought to be off the table entirely. He might have suggested it rather strongly, with an emphasis on the _because you owe me_ part of the speech. He might have provided a few thoughts of his own on where Clint could best be of use. It was the most he could do, until he got back and could push in person.

It wasn’t any one thing, in the end. It was some recurring knot in the threads of Clint’s network, some off-note in Phil’s communications from SHIELD, the increased frequency with which “inspect in person” appeared on the work orders for Phil’s new team, a repeated beat underneath everything going _soon, soon,_ that had them turning towards one another after breakfast one morning.

“Walk you down to the beach?” Clint said, and Phil nodded. He left his rings on and wore the stupid hat with the berry brim. They held hands all the way down, knuckles white. 

They didn’t come back until nightfall, their lips bruised with kissing, and repeated the pattern the next day.

The day after, they both watched the television in silence, entwined in each other, as Tony Stark called out the Mandarin, and his home disappeared into the ocean soon thereafter. The realization they’d stayed too long already hung unspoken in the air between them. Phil booked them two flights out of Faa’a International airport, and they turned off the tv and disappeared into the trees.

As they lay on the beach that afternoon, squinting into the sun as it dried them, Clint turned to Phil.

“So tell me,” he said, with the world’s least successful attempt at smoothness, “did the docs ever clear you for, um, strenuous activity?”

“Clint, we just spent a good hour body surfing. I think it’s safe to say that I’m clear.” Hell, he’d been clear for ages, and he suspected Clint knew it. It was just another of the increasing number of things that went on their list of unspokens. “You had an activity in mind?” 

“More of a promise,” Clint said, attempting a leer. Phil ducked his head to hide his laugh.

“Hmmm. Well, I’d hate you not to think I’m a man of his word.”

“I’d hate that, too. Anyway, we have a reputation to maintain.”

“We do, don’t we?”

“Mmmm.”

“It’s probably best to wait until the night before we leave. Or Maricela and Andres may kill us when they see the damage.”

“Planning on running away from the scene of the crime, Agent Coulson?”

“A strategic retreat, I think. C’mon, help me up. If I only get so much more time here, god help me I’m not missing dinners.” Clint pulled him up, smiling as he did.

“You look like you’ve spent years on the island, Phil. You’re going to shock them all at the zombie party.” He traced a hand down the tanned, freckled planes of Phil’s cheek and neck.

“Oh, god,” Phil groaned. “Don’t remind me of that. _Please_.” 

“Better to be warned than not.” Clint turned away long enough to gather their things, and perched the damned straw fedora on his head. Phil eyed it suspiciously.

“One thing I will not miss, is that ridiculous hat,” he said. He felt a sudden spike of anger towards it, for no reason he could pinpoint other than sheer desperate transference. Underneath its brim, Clint grinned.

“And here I was,” he said, “going to give it to you as a present.” He flipped the hat off, dropped it on Phil’s head, and followed it with a smacking kiss. “After all, you can’t greet your new team with a peeling forehead.”

 

**8-- Goodbyes**

 

There were still things to do before they left; plans to make for their return, secure files to pack away and their own personal items to gather together. The sheer amount he’d accumulated made Phil think he ought to have agitated for a grass hut on the beach, instead. 

They spent the time they had left frankly sizing up the ranch house, deciding which breakables ought to be moved out of the way, locking up the electronics, testing the tables and cabinetry for sturdiness, reinforcing the hammock’s hooks, and debating the merits of Phil’s bed versus Clint’s (or both in succession). 

Dinner that last night was fast, and Phil was humming with nerves. Clint drummed lightly on the tabletop with the hand he wasn’t using to eat, until Phil reached across to pin it down. He forgot to remove his hand for a while. They finished and cleared the table in silence, then went to stand outside on the porch, watching the stars come out over the dark line of the treetops.

“So,” Clint said finally.

“Yeah,” Phil replied.

They stood in silence a little longer, and then Phil reached out, slid his fingers through Clint’s, and tugged. Clint came into his arms as if magnetized, threading his hand up and around the nape of Phil’s neck and pressing in to kiss him. Phil returned it as hard as he possibly could, shaking with the effort. It was a long time before they drew back far enough for Clint to nuzzle Phil’s neck with his nose, and then whisper in his ear:

“Want to feel you inside me, Phil. Please?” Phil nodded, not sure he trusted his voice at all. It was not… that was not how things went, in this little game. Not that he _minded_ , oh dear sweet loving God no. He just hadn’t _expected_.

“Credenza or couch to start with?” he asked Clint, trying to put a leer behind it. Clint’s smile was a flash through the dark.

“I never really liked that coffee table,” he said.

“Coffee table it is, then.”  
____

The coffee table had a wide scatter pattern of books and files, though it itself was still standing. The couch’s cushions had all been scattered, but the credenza still carried its full complement of tropical knick-knacks (apart from the gorgeous telescope, which had disappeared in the general pre-sex battening down of hatches). The framed lithographs of palm trees and orchids that lined the walls of the hallway were still perfectly level and even.

The shower was silent, the bathroom dark, cool, and dry.

In the bedroom, the lamps still stood, and the torchiere in the corner gave out a low, warm light.

There was little clothing to be strewn about, but what there was had been dropped in two neat little piles, where Clint and Phil had undressed each other, slowly, paying close attention to the ritual of of slipping each individual button through its buttonhole. The straw fedora with the berry brim hung from one of the mahogany bedposts.

On the bed, the two of them moved in a languid, bending rhythm, sliding apart and together, silent except for the soft creaks of the bedframe.

Phil paused, deep inside Clint, stroked the arch of his back, down to cup the swell where his ass met his thighs, and sighed. He ran his knuckles back up, bracketed Clint's ribs and leaned over to kiss the back of his neck.

"Can you turn over? Please?" He whispered. After a moment, Clint nodded. "Thank you--" Clint was already moving, easing himself down to his elbows then flipping himself over, one leg sweeping out, up, over until he was on his back, hips arched up, still tight around Phil. Who felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. 

"Holy--" he breathed, before Clint dragged him down into a kiss. 

They found a new rhythm-- slow and undulating, two waves meeting. Phil buried his lips in Clint's, then under his ear, his jaw, in his neck, muffling the endearments that he could not stop. Clint's hands ranged over his back, stroking softly and stopping sometimes to grab, hard, to press Phil as close to him as humanly possible. His cock was pressed tight between their bellies, hot with the movement of their slick skin. 

Phil drew back to drink in Clint, to fall into those desperate wide eyes, to memorize the lost, longing gaze, the little hitches to his breath, his eyebrows, his mouth, each time they came together.

Somewhere in there, Phil wasn't sure because he was too busy trying to hold back the prickle of tears at the same time as keeping up his side of the dance, Clint's gaze on him turned questioning, shades of wary flitting over his face followed by traces of wonder. Phil watched the play for a moment, then sighed and kissed him.

"Clint?" he said, "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?" Clint held himself still, answering Phil's own pause.

"What are we doing?" The minute it was out of his mouth, Phil wanted to curse. _We're fucking, of course._ (Except they weren't-- Phil was very nearly certain they were, in fact, _making love_ \-- at least, he knew he was, which was problematic on several levels.) But Clint surprised him, the way Clint sometimes did when he stepped off a roof, casual as if he weren't falling into open space with no net below him.

"We're saying goodbye," Clint said. Whether he'd been able to read the silent lips that brushed against his shoulder or not, Phil wasn't sure, but he nodded. No sense hiding it. Clint raised a hand to Phil's cheek, and gently brushed the trace of wetness away from his lashes. 

The shift of their bodies was just enough friction to provide an edge of urgency, but Phil ignored it in favor of settling in further and kissing Clint's palm. He wanted to wait it out, to let Clint tell him what he wanted, and then Phil would say yes or no.

But that had always been their way, Phil being so cautious of Clint's autonomy in anything outside the job, and it only occurred to him now that he wanted to jump himself just how hard it was to do. But Clint had come to him, in his ridiculous hat, and he had been clear enough what he wanted, in all honesty.

"What if... what if I don't want to say goodbye?" This had to be the world's least fair position to ask that question in, with him braced above Clint, holding him on his back with his body and his cock. Completely unable, in other words, to extricate himself quickly if the answer was a bad one. 

"Phil, babe," Clint said, his eyes soft, "I don't want to either," he tapped at the smile Phil felt taking over his face, "but the plane leaves tomorrow."

"No, I mean," oh, god, awkward fidgeting when you were balls deep in someone just didn't work, "I mean, what if I don't want to say goodbye forever? What if I want to try to...." Here, he would normally have made a kind of spiral hand gesture to make up for his inability to find the right words. He was stuck at the moment, and had to rely on a complex series of glances between himself, Clint, and their conjoined groins, to try and get his point across.

"Do you?" Clint said, watching him intently. Then he shook his head. "How does that work, though? You travelling all over and me," he shrugged, but Phil knew that whatever else he was doing, he was planning to be based largely in New York. "It's not that I haven't thought about it. I just don't see... Fury's not wrong. Different teams, now. Our ways part here, yours and mine."

"They don't have to split completely," Phil felt his elbows buckle, and Clint snaked an arm up and rolled them both onto their sides, still joined. Phil settled in, trying to catch Clint's chin in his hand. "I mean, it wouldn't be every day anymore, not even every week or sometimes month. But you have a bike, and we have a plane. You helped pick the damn thing out. I can base us wherever the hell I want to. And you can meet us if we're close or you're on the road."

"Phil," Clint grinned, thought it didn't quite meet his eyes, "you planning on parking the bus by the nearest motel, or trying to sneak me inside? Because that's it, right? What we talked about with Nat-- we couldn’t do anything openly, since I’m not supposed to know you’re alive."

"We... can work on it? If you want? Shit... I can't ask you to continually hide something like this from the other Avengers, or even SHIELD. Bad enough I’m asking you to lie about me at all." It was not a realization Phil wanted to have at just that moment.

"No, _Fury_ asked me to do that. That's not the-- I'm not going to pretend I'm happy about it, but it's better than not knowing you're alive. And," he shrugged, "if they ever find out and they get shirty, I'll just remind 'em I'm a sneak, and I lie."

"No," Phil told him, yanking his chin down. "You're an Avenger, whatever that will turn out to be. Not a sneak." Clint kissed him, hard, and gathered Phil into his arms.

" _God._ Phil, you can’t say things like that. It makes me want to keep you in my pocket, so I can drag you out when I need to hear it. I've got no fucking idea how this would work. I couldn’t guarantee you anything at all, and you couldn’t do much more for me."

“I don’t need guarantees, Clint. We’d both be idiots to give them. I just… I just want to leave the door open. To have the option to see you again, if I can figure out how.” Clint frowned, was silent for a little, thinking.

“I don’t want you to have the _option_ to see me again, I want you to _see me again_ ,” he said at last. “But I don’t want us to slowly get more and more frustrated, missing each other more than we see each other.Tahiti’s been pretty magical, you know? I don’t want to ruin _this_ ,” he emphasized with a roll of his hips. Phil let his eyes flutter closed for a moment, trying to hold back the sting in them.

“You can’t ruin it, Clint. I promise you, no matter what happens after this, you can’t ruin this for me-- for us. What you’ve given… what _we’ve_ … it is what it is.” Clint chuckled, watery.

“We’ll always have Tahiti?”

“Yes, I suppose. But I’d like to at least _try_ to have Paris, too. And Portland. And Peoria, if that’s what it takes to see you. No promises, no assumptions about… us, about our lives the rest of the time. Can’t we just… can we….” He felt Clint’s exhale along the entire length of his body.

“We can try. No promises. No assumptions. But, yeah. Yeah. We’ll find a way to see each other again and just… see how it goes.”

"Really?"

"Yeah. Really. Phil?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you maybe start moving again, please?" 

"Oh, of course." Phil bucked his hips, and Clint growled at him and buried his nose in Phil's neck. Phil began to move again, letting both of them come slowly back into sync, and he kissed every inch he could reach of Clint's neck, chin, lips, shoulders.... Clint responded with a little shimmy of his ass that had Phil biting his lip and frozen, trying not to come.  
They found their rhythm again, slow, exploratory, with time to nip at tender skin and tickle and just generally lose themselves in each other. Phil watched Clint's face greedily as each inward stroke of his cock sent little shocks across his face. Clint smirked unrepentantly each time a little catch in his rhythm would throw Phil wobbly. It was a long, lazy fuck, all the better to memorize each and every single detail about the other. 

And finally, as the moon was beginning to sink out over the veranda and the breezes were coming sweet and soft through the french doors, Phil felt a new sense of urgency in him. He drew Clint's ass up to him, slipped a pillow under it, and raised an eyebrow. Clint raised one back, then yelped as Phil drove into him. Hard.

"Oh, fuck, _yes_ ," Clint groaned out, as Phil pounded forward once again, and Phil laughed almost maniacally and set about giving him smacking kisses and nips all about his shoulders, chest, neck, and lips, while he thrust. Clint responded in kind, and raked his hands down Phil's back.

"Shit--" Phil reached down, tilted himself up just enough to catch Clint's cock, and stroked it with shaking hands. Clint went rigid, started to shudder around him, and finally caught his mouth in a sloppy kiss, moaning as his orgasm caught him off guard. The warmth of Clint's come on his belly was what did it for Phil, and he doubled up and thrust in, coming inside Clint, pulsing for what seemed like forever, but watching Clint, moving faintly all the way through it.

They lay together afterwards, unwilling to clean up or even untangle themselves. 

"Well then," Clint breathed after a while. Phil laughed.

"Lola," he said.

"That little red corvette from the motor pool Fury loves so much? The one he had retrofitted with the, ah," Phil appreciated his discretion.

"He still owes me for the cards, apart from the rest of this mess. I’ve decided what I want: Lola. With any other modifications I request. I can bring her on the bus. And _that_ , Agent, gives me more mobility, more chances to come visit _you_."

"I'm not gonna turn down a visit from Lola, much less one that means you stole her from our good Director."

“You’d turn down a visit from me?" Phil was grinning now, even with the realization that this was likely going to be the last time they saw each other for a while.

"I could be persuaded otherwise," Clint said, yawning. And Phil supposed that was all right; tomorrow they'd be gone. Tonight, though? 

He cuddled into Clint, and stopped thinking about the future.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this over a month ago using spoilers from the recaps of the Agents of SHIELD pilot, as an attempt to do an Agents of SHIELD-compliant Clint/Coulson recovery fic. I was actually kind of amazed how little editing I’ve had to do on this post-pilot airing. I’m sure this will get thoroughly Jossed whenever they decide to explain what it is HE CAN NEVER KNOW.
> 
> And I really don’t care, because whatever Joss does to us is going to hurt so much more.
> 
> Thanks to Agents of SHIELD, I've gone and joined [tumblr](http://kat-har.tumblr.com/), which I will likely live to regret. Feel free to chatter at me about how wrong I got "what Coulson can never know" there.


End file.
